Medium Elephant Dung Notebook

Our elephant dung notebooks make a great quirky but practical gift. They are Fair Trade and perfect for use as a journal or simply as an everyday notebook.

The elephant dung covers are made from 75% elephant dung and 25% recycled paper – yes really! The notebooks are filled with approximately 60 pages of paddy husk paper, a beautiful handmade paper that is very smooth and easy to write on with any pen of your choice. All the paper is acid-free.

The notebooks are handmade by skilled local artisans who complete the designs with a brass elephant motif. The brass elephant motifs are all hand finished and may be a slightly different design to the image shown.

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Product Description

Details

All the elephant dung paper used to make the covers of the notebooks is handmade at the Maximus Elephant Conservation Trust in Sri Lanka.

The process of making elephant dung paper is a little different to making regular handmade paper. The fibres are pulped by the elephant, instead of by hand or machine, whilst they are digesting, then the readymade pulp comes out the back!

The elephant dung is collected then vigorously boiled with margosa leaves, which are a natural disinfectant. They are then mixed with 25% recycled paper, resulting in our beautiful elephant dung paper. The coarseness and shade of the paper is entirely dependent on the elephants’ diet, making each sheet as unique as the elephant that produced it.

The beautiful paper inside the notebooks is handmade from paddy husk, a by-product of Sri Lanka’s rice milling industry. Its high fibre and silica content produces a lovely smooth paper and because rice is the staple food of the country there is plenty of paddy husk available.

Make a Difference

By buying this product you are helping improve the outlook for the majestic elephants of Sri Lanka.

All the products in this range are made by skilled and creative artisans using elephant dung paper from the Maximus Elephant Conservation Trust. Elephant dung paper is the ultimate in recycling - it's made up of 75% dung and 25% recycled paper, with the elephants in charge of the pulping process of paper-making as they digest their food!

Maximus has its workshop in the grounds of the Millennium Elephant Foundation (MEF), a wonderful small charity that cares for sick, old and disabled elephants. The foundation is also working hard to resolve the conflict between elephants and local communities, a critical concern as the elephants' natural habitat decreases and they turn to eating farmers' crops.

Working with initiatives like Maximus, they are able to show the positive relationship local economies can have with these amazing animals - a simple example of this is that they pay villagers to collect the elephant dung which is used to make the paper.

By buying this product you will help the foundation continue its incredible work.

Delivery

This product comes packaged in a re-sealable bag and is sent 1st class by Royal Mail as standard within 2 working days of your order.

The post is not always as reliable as it might be, so please allow five days for delivery.